MSI X-Slim X340 Ultraportable Review

Battery Life

MSI has clearly been listening to the outcries hurled in Apple’s direction over the MacBook Air’s non-removable battery and has kitted the X340 out with a removable four-cell Litium-Ion battery. It’s a slim little number rated at 2,150mAh which is a small capacity.

Moreover, it’s the reason why the X-Slim X340 isn’t quite as thin as the Air – Apple’s compromise on this front was part of the reason why it could make the MacBook Air from such a thin slice of aluminium. It does limit your ability to be out on the road for long periods of time though because there’s no opportunity to change the battery when it runs dry.

We ran the X-Slim X340 through two different battery tests and the results were fine on the whole, although not excellent. In a best case scenario with the machine left to drain the battery while sitting on the Windows Vista desktop, it achieved just under four hours, 45 minutes. In our more intensive 3G test, the X-Slim X340 lasted for just shy of three hours – two hours, 56 minutes to be exact.

At face value, this battery life is reasonable and when you consider the battery’s actual capacity, it’s a little more impressive. MSI says that it will be offering an eight-cell version of the battery as an option as well, so with that you can expect to at least double your time away from the plug socket. It will, however, carry a weight penalty and will no doubt ruin the X-Slim X340’s svelte figure.

Conclusion

The MSI X-Slim X340 does a lot of things right, but it is not without its problems. The keyboard is, without doubt, the biggest sticking point for us, as we not only feel the layout needs some work, and it’s also a less than satisfying experience to type on it – it’s just a little bit too dead for our liking. Some may not find that an issue though.

Aside from that, the aesthetics are a little mix and match on the black version because the combination of finishes just doesn’t work all that well in our opinion. It can be fixed by simply opting for the white version though if you can put up with dirt being much more visible. Finally, the trackpad has a strange lag issue that you may or may not find a problem – it wasn’t immediately apparent to us at first, but it came up when we were doing some image editing that required precise cursor control.

These problems are fairly easy to forgive though when you consider the £760 asking price and its incredibly sleek and sexy figure. With all things considered, that’s not a lot for an ultra portable notebook and it’s at such a price that MSI is likely to find itself carving a niche.

• Build Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Ease of Use
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

Score Guide